so ive been flying for about two years now mostly just for fun, got my part 107 last spring and people keep asking me to film stuff for them ? weddings, a couple real estate agents, one guy wanted aerial shots of his farm. ive just been doing it for free or like accepting beer money but my wife keeps saying i should actually charge people properly.

the thing is i have no idea how to set any of this up like as an actual business. do i need an LLC or can i just operate as a sole proprietor at first? and what about insurance ? i know i need hull insurance for the drone itself but do i need separate liability coverage for commercial work or does that come bundled somewhere? ive looked at Verifly and SkyWatch and honestly got a litte confused about what I actually need vs what they're trying to upsell me on.

also pricing. i genuinely have no clue what to charge. the real estate stuff especially ? i see people saying anywhere from $150 to $500 for a basic shoot and thats a huge range. am i supposed to include editing in that or is that a separate line item. sorry for the wall of text just kind of overwhelmed trying to figure out where to start

ok so the LLC question ? honestly when i started i just went sole proprietor for like the first 6 months to keep things simple, but i switched to a single member LLC pretty quick once i started getting actual contracts. the liability protection is just worth it, especially for commercial drone work where one bad day could get you sued. filing the LLC in most states is like $50-100 and you can do it yourself online, dont overthink it.

for insurance i use SkyWatch and have been pretty happy with it ? i do the annual policy rather than the per-flight thing because once you're doing regular work the per-flight cost adds up fast. the liability coverage is what clients care about most by the way, ive had multiple real estate brokerages ask to be listed as additional insured on my policy before they'd even talk to me about rates. so get that sorted early.

on pricing ? real estate around here i charge $200 for the shoot plus $75 for editing if they want the full package. some guys charge more, some less, kind of depends on your market honestly. dont race to the bottom though, it hurts everyone and the clients who only want the cheapest option are usually the most annoying to work with anyway

im kind of in the same boat so following this thread. one thing i heard is that some homeowners/general liability policies you might already have will explicitly exclude commercial drone operations so worth checking that before you assume you have any coverage at all